Earthquakes are not the only natural hazards in this part of Europe. Floods are an all-too-frequent reality, too. That is why the project has repaired and improved the safety of six dams to insure they... Show More + don't leak, crack, or worse, fail. It has protected riverbanks to ensure full rivers don't over flow.The project rehabilitated mine facilities that contain pollutants left over after the valuable portion of what's being mined has been extracted. That reduced the risk of accidental spills that could contaminate the soil, air and water, harming human and aquatic life. A computer-based monitoring system tailored to mining operations was developed.Strengthening institutional and technical capacity to manage disasters is part of the project, too. A management information system was developed to allow emergency responders to react quickly and efficiently to emergencies like earthquakes and floods. Emergency responders at Bucharest's crisis control center have been trained to use the software which will be rolled out in 48 locations around Romania in the near future.The project supported the creation of a mandatory catastrophic insurance scheme that transfers the financial risk of a natural catastrophe away from citizens. It gave technical assistance for the development of a high resolution flood and earthquake risk model and for a dynamic financial analysis model for the establishment of a Pool for Insurance against Disasters. And it supported the development of norms and regulations for the implementation of a law mandating insurance of dwellings. Show Less -

The project’s four components included: (a) strengthening of emergency management and risk financing capacity; (b) seismic risk reduction; (c) floods and landslides risk reduction; (d) risk reduction of... Show More + mining accidents in the Tisza Basin.Approved by the Bank’s Board of Directors in 2004, the project has been successful in meeting its objectives. The Emergency Management Information System was rolled out in 48 locations (exceeding the target of at least 23 locations), a public awareness and education program was designed, and a catastrophe insurance program was set up. The Vrancea earthquake scenario was also developed.Seismic retrofitting of over 40 public buildings has been completed, and 14 hospitals, 10 local administration buildings, nine education facilities, seven emergency response facilities and four social protection facilities will be completely refurbished under the project by May 2013.While 23,350 people are considered at direct risk in the event of a severe earthquake, it is estimated 2.8 million people would be indirectly affected and benefit from the project’s accomplishments.To reduce the risk of floods, the safety of seven dams was improved, which together with the flood protection efforts in 10 vulnerable areas will provide protection to over 266,000 people and 68,000 households at direct risk of flooding. In addition, almost 100 km of national roads and over 110 km of county roads have been protected, as well as many schools, churches and daycare centers. In addition, landslide monitoring equipment is in place and data collection has begun.Government and local agencies identified pollution from mines and mine tailings as Romania’s greatest environmental quality threat. According to available information, 264 small dams store mine tailings, of which about 40 pose a severe threat to the surrounding human population and the environment. Accidental spills of pollutants from mining accidents could cause water and soil contamination, send pollutants into the Danube and Black Sea basins, and cause the loss of human and aquatic life.A Global Environment Facility (GEF) co-financed component of the project assisted in improving the management and safety of tailings dams and waste dump facilities and catalyzed trans-boundary cooperation on integrated water resources management of the Tisza Basin. The successful implementation of the GEF co-financed component will serve as a model for reducing mining accident risks to human and aquatic ecosystem health throughout Romania and other parts of the Tisza and Danube basins. Remediation works in six sites have been completed, exceeding the initial target of three sites.The Hazard Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project was funded with a total of US$197 million, of which US$ 143.4 million was from IBRD, US$ 46.6 million from the Government and US$ 7 million from GEF. Show Less -

Joint action needed to link disaster risk management, climate adaptationWASHINGTON, April 27, 2012—On the heels of a sobering UN report on dramatic climate extremes expected to occur around the world,... Show More + officials from donor and developing countries, along with international organizations have reaffirmed their commitments to making disaster resilience a priority in development planning. The officials, meeting during the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, also recognized that linking disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, and integrating them into the development agenda, is critical to building resilience in communities and countries. Mahmoud Mohieldin, World Bank Managing Director, said, "We have too often witnessed how disasters can roll back years of development progress. On top of that, we now need to prepare for a changing world—rapid urbanization and a changing climate are reshaping and exacerbating disaster risks. But geography need not be destiny, and the future—however uncertain and unpredictable when we factor in the impact of climate change—need not be feared if correct preventive policies are taken today.” Convened by the European Union, the Government of Japan, and the World Bank/GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery), the meeting was informed by last month’s report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—Special Report on Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. The report documents that current extreme weather events are projected to become more common in the future, and a changing climate is the cause. According to Christopher Field, Co-Chair of the IPCC Working Group ll, “The risk profiles are changing—several kinds of climate and weather extremes are increasing and are projected to increase in the future. In the second half of the century, we are looking at a ten-fold increase in the frequency of severe heat events. The most extreme heat waves that we currently experience only once a decade will become annual events.” The report warns that extreme events will have greater impacts on sectors with closer links to climate, such as water, agriculture and food security, forestry, health, and tourism. Dr. Field pointed out that many places are already seeing increases in extremes in heavy precipitation and in the length and severity of droughts. The people most impacted are those most vulnerable in the developing world—in 2010, the Pakistan floods alone left six million people homeless. Floods are the most frequent of natural disasters. Unprecedented―and often unregulated and unplanned―urbanization in the developing world, a large part of which is in fertile floodplains and/or coastal regions, is a key cause of increased exposure to flooding. Globally, it is projected that 600 million people will occupy coastal floodplain land below flood level by 2100. The key message from the IPCC report is the need for climate change adaptation, disaster risk management, and sustainable development to be integrated in order to help build resilience. But the numbers tell us that we’re not there yet. The world is still spending more on humanitarian aid after a disaster than on prevention before it. According to Andris Piebalgs, Commissioner for Development, European Union, global disaster losses amounted to US$264 billion in 2011. That was twice the level of official development aid that year. The participants in the Resilience Dialogue talked about how they would meet that challenge―through coordination, bridging humanitarian and development efforts, integrated approaches, and by working together to turn the reaction versus prevention paradigm on its head.Naoko Ishii, Deputy Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, Japan, also announced that the next high level meeting of the officials will be held during the October 2012 IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings. The meeting will be held in Sendai, a city in Tohoku prefecture that bore the brunt of the 2011 tsunami. The objective will be to develop a global consensus among the international community to advance the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation as a development priority.On Working Together and Next StepsArmida Alisjahbana Minister of National Development Planning, Indonesia“Indonesia faces more than 100 disasters a year. In 2004, the Tsunami cost about 45 percent of Aceh’s regional economy. We have tried since to prepare for disasters in a more systematic way—early warning systems in disaster-prone areas, more coordinated efforts, money in our budget to anticipate disasters, a five-year blueprint to prepare for disasters. The key to make coordination work, the key thing is to have a single institution dealing with these issues. We don’t have institutions duplicating work.”Valerie AmosUnited Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator"We have learned lessons from the Horn of Africa and we've heeded early warning signs―and have moved much more quickly to respond in the Sahel. We're bridging development and humanitarian efforts to build resilience and support governments in the region in their response to this."Helen ClarkAdministrator, United Nations Development Programme“Without a basic level of resilience, you can't hang on to the gains you've made when adversity and shocks come along. Dialogue about resilience has come light years. With everyone reflecting on the cost of major disasters, the message is very clear: Don’t wait for the next one—we know that at some time there will be another earthquake, another tsunami, a cyclone, a drought, so what can we do as development partners? Resilience must be at the very heart of our development activities. Active, effective, honest, fair and responsive and representative governance promotes resilience, in every country. As the recent financial crisis showed, not all developed countries have retained systemic resilience to economic shocks. Unless developed countries are prepared to see years of human development and progress wiped away when adversity strikes, their systemic resilience to shocks is critical as well.”Naoko IshiiDeputy Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, Japan“The very timely IPCC Report makes clear that disaster risk management and climate change adaptation measures are essentially two sides of the same coin. These measures need to be incorporated across various sectors as a key component of development policy. In doing so, a multi-layered approach is necessary to avoid relying on just one measure. Maintaining infrastructure and cutting-edge technology is not sufficient in itself. In order to empower individuals to act when they face natural disasters, hard infrastructure needs to be complemented by disaster education, risk communication, evacuation training, and other measures. Japan has been a steadfast champion of the disaster risk management agenda. The Great East Japan Earthquake of last year has only made Japan reaffirm its increased commitment to help reduce disaster risk throughout the world.”Rachel KyteVice President, Sustainable Development, World Bank“Over the last three years, two-thirds of our country assistance strategies have started to build in disaster risk management. The aim is to get to 100 percent. We have to change the way we think about infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, water, energy, how communities become resilient, what kind of information we share. We have to help people make infrastructure decisions that will prove resilient far into the future. But we know too that we are in an “adaptation” institution. Climate change adaptation has to be integrated in all we do.Dario LunaHead of Unit, Insurance, Pensions and Social Security, Ministry of Finance, Mexico“We in Mexico give a lot of importance to disaster risk management because we are a country that is prone to disasters. As presidency of the G20, we wanted to put this topic on the agenda―emphasizing the reduction of both human and economic costs. One of the key aspects of our changing world is the increased exposure to natural disasters. We believe that this effort will help disaster risk management gain more prominence in G20 countries and with finance ministers.”Andrew MitchellSecretary of State for International Development, United Kingdom and Co-chair of the Political Champions Group for Resilience“I hope our Political Champions Group will be a good servant of the international efforts engaged in these issues. In addition, by 2015, DFID will imbed resilience in all of our work. We particularly want to harness the role of the private sector for insurance.”Mahmoud MohieldinManaging Director, World Bank“There is much we can do together to build resilience in communities and nations. We can—and should—build international consensus and country ownership to continue investing in measuring risk and informing decision making for increased resilience. We can—and should—complete work on a globally accepted metric to assess urban disaster risk that could be applied to cities around the world. Such a metric will let us analyze cities according to their level of risk, and define a baseline against which to measure progress towards building greater resilience; and we can—and should—continue the dialogue on how to better measure our progress towards building greater resilience.”Andris PiebalgsCommissioner for Development, European Union“The EU is deeply involved in putting its resilience commitments into practice on a number of fronts. We are coordinating, planning and programming among humanitarian and development actors to deliver common analyses and joint definition of priorities (as in the Horn of Africa and Sahel); we are developing new, more flexible EU financial instruments; we are increasing our focus on resilience and capacity-building at the central and community level; and we are allocating more to prevention preparedness and resilience in humanitarian aid and development budgets, while also advocating the inclusion of disaster risk reduction on government agendas.”Rajiv ShahAdministrator, United States Agency for International Development“The question we should ask ourselves is what is happening in the most vulnerable areas on the ground? It is clear we are not doing enough. We have to reverse the way things work now—we are still spending more on humanitarian aid than prevention. That has to reverse. Since 2002, the U.S. spent $11.2 billion on humanitarian aid in the Horn of Africa―chasing the problem after the fact. We want to reverse that, put it into prevention. We need to reverse the equation from reaction to prevention and make sure that whatever we do drives results.”About the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)Established in 2006, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) is a partnership of 41 countries and eight international organizations committed to helping developing countries reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards and adapt to climate change. The partnership’s mission is to mainstream disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in country development strategies by supporting a country-led and managed implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action. Show Less -

Rapid urbanization and climate change are reshaping and exacerbating disaster risk. Together, they have added urgency to the task of building resilience in communities and countries around the world.Climate... Show More + extremes that we could hardly imagine and cope with every 20 years are going to happen every two years in this century. This is the message of a sobering report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the dramatic climate extremes that are expected to increase around the world.Meeting on the margins of the World Bank/IMF spring meetings on April 20 to discuss the implications of the report for their work on building resilience, donors, developing countries and international organizations reaffirmed their commitment to making disaster resilience a priority in development planning. The group of leading officials also agreed that integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into the development agenda is critical to building resilience in communities and countries."We have too often witnessed how disasters can roll back years of development progress," said World Bank Managing Director Mahmoud Mohieldin. "On top of that, we now need to prepare for a changing world—rapid urbanization and a changing climate are reshaping and exacerbating disaster risks.""But as we discussed today, geography need not be destiny, and the future—however uncertain and unpredictable when we factor in the impact of climate change—need not be feared if correct preventive policies are taken today.”Convened by the European Union, the Government of Japan, and the World Bank/GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery), the Resilience Dialogue was informed by last month’s IPCC report Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.Christopher Field, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group ll, warned the group: “The risk profiles are changing—several kinds of climate and weather extremes are increasing and are projected to increase in the future. In the second half of the century, we are looking at a ten-fold increase in the frequency of severe heat events. The most extreme heat waves that we currently experience only once a decade will become annual events.”Field pointed out that we are, in many places, already seeing increases in extremes in heavy precipitation and in the length and severity of droughts. For many poor communities living in areas already exposed to even moderate climate events, such as floods, this is indeed bad news. The people most impacted are those most vulnerable in the developing world—in 2010, the Pakistan floods alone left six million people homeless.Floods are the most frequent of all natural disasters. A recent World Bank paper on cities and flooding estimates that flooding in 2010 affected 178 million people. Unprecedented―and often unregulated and unplanned―urbanization in the developing world, a large part of which is in fertile floodplains and/or coastal regions, is a key cause of increased exposure to flooding. In China, 100 million people have moved from inland to coastal areas in the last 20 years. Globally 600 million people will occupy coastal floodplain land below flood level by 2100.Indonesia knows too well the horrendous impact that disasters can have―the cost in lives and GDP. The 2004 tsunami took more than 200,000 lives. But Indonesia has learned from its disasters.“Indonesia faces more than 100 disasters a year,” said Armida Alisjahbana Minister of National Development Planning, Indonesia. “In 2004, the tsunami cost about 45 percent of Aceh's regional economy. We have tried since to prepare for disasters in a more systematic way—early warning systems in disaster-prone areas, more coordinated efforts, money in our budget to anticipate disasters, a five-year blueprint to prepare for disasters. The key to make coordination work, the key thing is to have a single institution dealing with these issues. We don’t have institutions duplicating work.”The key message from this IPCC report is the need for climate change adaptation, disaster risk management and sustainable development to be integrated into the same agenda in order to help build resilience. But the numbers tell us that we’re not there yet. The world is still spending more on humanitarian aid after a disaster than investing in prevention. According to Andris Piebalgs, Commissioner for Development, European Union, global disaster losses amounted to US$264 billion in 2011. That amount was twice the official development aid in 2011.The World Bank, as a development institution, has been focusing more and more on building resilience. It established disaster risk reduction as a practice group, staffed up, and invested US$6 billion in the last six years in disaster risk reduction to support countries to integrate resilience into their development strategies.“Over the last three years, two-thirds of our country assistance strategies have started to build in disaster risk management. The aim is to get to 100 percent," said Kyte. "We have to change the way we think about infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, water, energy, how communities become resilient, what kind of information we share. We have to help people make infrastructure decisions that will prove resilient far into the future. But we know, too, that we are in an 'adaptation' institution. Climate change adaptation has to be integrated in all we do.”Working Together and Next StepsGFDRR, as the disaster risk reduction (DRR) focal point in the World Bank, is leading assistance to the Government of Mexico to develop DRR as a priority topic for Mexico’s G20 presidency in 2012.Dario Luna, who leads the Insurance, Pensions and Social Security unit in Mexico's Ministry of Finance, is coordinating this initiative for the Mexican government.“We in Mexico give a lot of importance to disaster risk reduction because we are a country that is prone to disasters,” Luna said. “As presidency of the G20, we wanted to put this topic on the agenda―emphasizing the reduction of both human and economic cost. One of the key aspects of our changing world is the increased exposure to natural disasters. We believe that this effort will help DRR gain more prominence in G20 countries and with finance ministers.”A key challenge in the development of risk management strategies based on robust risk information, analysis, and modeling is the lack of systematic tools and methodologies to collect data, assess risk and vulnerability, and inform decision making. A joint Mexico and World Bank public policy publication will be produced on Improving the Assessment of Natural Disaster Risks to Strengthen Financial Resilience, and presented to the G20 summit on 18-19 June in Los Cabos.Naoko Ishii, deputy vice minister of finance for International Affairs in Japan, closed the Resilience Dialogue by announcing that the next high level meeting will be held during the October 2012 IMF-World Bank Annual meetings. The event will be in Sendai, a city in the Tohoku prefecture that bore the brunt of the tsunami last year, and its objective will be to develop a global consensus among the international community to advance the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation as a development priority.“The very timely IPCC Report makes clear that disaster risk management and climate change adaptation measures are essentially two sides of the same coin," Ishii said. "These measures need to be incorporated across various sectors as a key component of development policy."The participants in the Resilience Dialogue talked about how they would meet that challenge―through coordination, bridging humanitarian and development efforts, integrated approaches and by working together to turn the reaction versus prevention paradigm on its head. Show Less -

The overall objective of the Hazard Risk
Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project is to assist
the Government of Romania in reducing the environmental,
social,... Show More + and economic vulnerability to natural disasters and
catastrophic mining accidental spills of pollutants through:
(i) strengthening the institutional and technical capacity
for disaster management and emergency response through
upgrading communication and information systems; (ii)
implementing specific risk reduction investments for floods,
landslides and earthquakes; (iii) improving the safety of
selected water-retention dams; and (iv) improving on a pilot
basis the management and safety of tailings dams and waste
dump facilities. The project has achieved seismic
retrofitting of 40 public buildings, flood protection at all
ten project sites, enhancing the safety of six large and
small dams, and safety of six tailings management facilities
(TMF) at three mines. Thus, all output targets set under
component B (seismic risk reduction), component C (flood and
landslides risk reduction), and component D (Risk Reduction
of Mining Accidents in Tisza Basin) have been met and even
exceeded. Under component A (strengthening of emergency
management and risk financing capacity), the roll-out of the
Emergency Management Information System (EMIS) is well
underway and its installation in all 48 locations envisaged
(exceeding the target of at least 23 locations) would be
completed by April 20, 2012, as planned. Seismic
retrofitting of five additional public buildings is underway
and should be completed by the current closing date (June
30, 2012). Installation of the landslides monitoring
equipment has been completed and data collection will start
soon, to enable finalization of the monitoring manual and
hand-over of the equipment and operational guidelines to the
relevant public authorities in charge with further
monitoring activity. The reallocation is necessary to
increase the amount available for operational expenditures
under component C until project closing. Show Less -

The overall objective of the Hazard Risk
Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project is to assist
the Government of Romania in reducing the environmental,
social,... Show More + and economic vulnerability to natural disasters and
catastrophic mining accidental spills of pollutants through:
(i) strengthening the institutional and technical capacity
for disaster management and emergency response through
upgrading communication and information systems; (ii)
implementing specific risk reduction investments for floods,
landslides and earthquakes; (iii) improving the safety of
selected water-retention dams; and (iv) improving on a pilot
basis the management and safety of tailings dams and waste
dump facilities. The project has achieved seismic
retrofitting of 40 public buildings, flood protection at all
ten project sites, enhancing the safety of six large and
small dams, and safety of six tailings management facilities
(TMF) at three mines. Thus, all output targets set under
component B (seismic risk reduction), component C (flood and
landslides risk reduction), and component D (Risk Reduction
of Mining Accidents in Tisza Basin) have been met and even
exceeded. Under component A (strengthening of emergency
management and risk financing capacity), the roll-out of the
Emergency Management Information System (EMIS) is well
underway and its installation in all 48 locations envisaged
(exceeding the target of at least 23 locations) would be
completed by April 20, 2012, as planned. Seismic
retrofitting of five additional public buildings is underway
and should be completed by the current closing date (June
30, 2012). Installation of the landslides monitoring
equipment has been completed and data collection will start
soon, to enable finalization of the monitoring manual and
hand-over of the equipment and operational guidelines to the
relevant public authorities in charge with further
monitoring activity. The reallocation is necessary to
increase the amount available for operational expenditures
under component C until project closing. Show Less -

The development objective of the
Disaster Hazard Mitigation Project for the Kyrgyz Republic
is to: a) minimize the exposure of humans, livestock, and
fluvial flora and... Show More + fauna to radionuclide's associated
with abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste rock dumps in
the Mailuu-Suu area; b) improve the effectiveness of
emergency management and response by national and
sub-national authorities and local communities to disaster
situations; and c) reduce the loss of life and property in
key landslide areas of the country. The reallocation is
necessary as the volume of civil works and consultancy
services is higher than originally estimated due to
increased quantities of radioactive tailings having to be
relocated from Tailings Management Facility (TMF) 03. The
current reallocation contains a small deviation from the
request from the Ministry of Finance in order to match the
revised amounts in the land and property and incremental
operating costs categories with the amounts actually
disbursed. This deviation has been approved by Ministry of
Finance on March 20, 2012. This will be the second extension
of the closing date and is expected that completion of the
works, including the relocation of the additional 38,000 Show Less -

The development objective of the
Disaster Hazard Mitigation Project for the Kyrgyz Republic
is to: a) minimize the exposure of humans, livestock, and
fluvial flora and... Show More + fauna to radionuclide's associated
with abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste rock dumps in
the Mailuu-Suu area; b) improve the effectiveness of
emergency management and response by national and
sub-national authorities and local communities to disaster
situations; and c) reduce the loss of life and property in
key landslide areas of the country. The reallocation is
necessary as the volume of civil works and consultancy
services is higher than originally estimated due to
increased quantities of radioactive tailings having to be
relocated from Tailings Management Facility (TMF) 03. The
current reallocation contains a small deviation from the
request from the Ministry of Finance in order to match the
revised amounts in the land and property and incremental
operating costs categories with the amounts actually
disbursed. This deviation has been approved by Ministry of
Finance on March 20, 2012. This will be the second extension
of the closing date and is expected that completion of the
works, including the relocation of the additional 38,000 Show Less -

The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA)
focuses disaster risk-management strategies into three
principal areas: risk identification, risk reduction and
risk transfer. Disaster... Show More + risk reduction is a priority for the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) because the
protection of lives, property and livelihoods is at the core
of the priorities of the WMO members and the National
Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NHMS).
Furthermore, the implementation of the Hyogo framework for
action by national governments is leading to changes in
national Disaster Risk Management (DRR) policies and legal
and institutional frameworks, with implications for the
role, responsibilities and new working arrangements for the
NMHS. These changes provide opportunities such as increased
recognition of the NMHSs by their governments and
stakeholders, which could result in strengthened
partnerships and increased resources. The
hydrometeorological services are also instrumental to
several other sectors, such as water resources, hydropower,
agriculture, transport, urban development, health and
others. This report contains the workshop proceedings. The
first part of the workshop focused on best practices in
hydro and weather hazard monitoring and early warning for
extreme events. The second part focused on investments that
are being undertaken by countries with World Bank support to
strengthen weather and climate services for better disaster
risk management. Show Less -